Matt Olson's Unexpected Slump: Analyzing His Season
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00:00 [MUSIC]
00:03 Now, I wanna move ahead to Matt Olsen here for a minute, Grant,
00:06 because of course, watching the Marlins as much as I do,
00:08 I watched that first series that Miami played with Atlanta.
00:11 Matt Olsen looked right, I mean, he looked fine.
00:14 It's been a while though since then, it's sort of stunning to see this continue,
00:18 this slump, which is now more than a few weeks.
00:21 It's been more or less the whole season with the exception of the first two weeks,
00:24 only three home runs this year, and 16 runs driven in.
00:29 What has been said, what's going on?
00:31 I mean, I see what's said on social media though, I don't buy all that stuff.
00:35 But what do you think is really happening here?
00:37 >> I mean, it's baffling, the results, I think, more so than anything.
00:41 Because when you go over to Matt Olsen's StatCast page, or
00:43 you look at his expected numbers, things are kind of in line with where he was
00:48 last year in terms of expected batting average.
00:50 He has had a lot of balls that have been hit at the right launch angle and
00:54 the right velocity where you would think there could be at least twice as many
00:57 home runs as he's hit, and this is the guy that hit 54 last year.
01:01 So you know it's in there, but for whatever reason,
01:04 it just has not had a lot of luck.
01:06 And the strikeouts have spiked a bit as well, and
01:08 that's something I know he's trying to adjust.
01:10 But Matt Olsen is as cool as they come, and the Braves overall, I mean,
01:14 they just seem to have this team philosophy or mantra of, all right, well,
01:17 if yesterday wasn't our day, today could be.
01:19 And I can't let yesterday kind of leak over into today and
01:22 cause me to change my focus on what it is.
01:25 He is very much in the moment.
01:27 He's a guy that loves to play every day.
01:29 And as both he and Austin Riley have told me in the last couple of years,
01:32 they're not looking for days off when they go into a slump.
01:34 They wanna be out there because as Riley in particular said,
01:37 I can't help the team from the bench, can't hit my way out of a slump from
01:40 the bench, and I think that's true for Matt Olsen as well.
01:42 [MUSIC]